Sacrifices of the Martyrs, Iran-Iraq War

This poster depicts a young boy cradling the remains of a dead soldier. Unlike many propaganda posters that shy away from depicting graphic imagery, this poster freely does so to convey an emotional response. This poster was made in 1980 during the Iran-Iraq War, and this poster was meant to provide a connection with the loss of Shia forces at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. Two hands rise up with the Iranian flag, and the blood of the martyrs is represented here. Iranian propaganda after the 1979 Islamic Revolution depicted greater religious and cultural overtones, reminding the Iranians of who they are as a people and what they are willing to do to keep their sovereignty intact.

Artistically, this poster features several focal points. In the foreground lies a young boy holding the body of a dead Iranian soldier, which might possibly be his father. He is a casualty of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The soldier is young, his clothes are ripped, there is blood everywhere and his right leg is completely gone below the knee. The boy is also holding the soldier’s gun and has a determined look on his face, which probably means that he will take up the struggle against the Iraqis. To the left are two disembodied hands holding up the Iranian flag that states God’s vengeance (the flag reads ‘Ya thar Allah’). The hands are meant to be previous Iranian martyrs, claiming the recently dead soldier. Hearkening back to the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD, where Shia forces lost, the Iranian government was trying to give a comparison between the Shia Iranians then and in the present. This gave Iranians an incentive to be a martyr for their country, because it would make the Ayatollah proud and martyrs would inspire soldiers to continue fighting.

The Iran-Iraq War was a pivotal moment in Iranian history. Iran had experienced the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and Iraq took advantage of Iran’s instability to invade. While Iraq believed that Iran would lose and they could become the new Persian Gulf power, Iran surprised Iraqi forces by pushing back the Iraqis to their original positions in 1982. For the next six years, Iran regained all lost territory. The war has been compared to World War I by scholars because of extensive trench warfare, use of chemical weapons, machine gun nests, and bayonet and human wave attacks across a no-man’s land.

The poster was meant to connect the Iran-Iraq War to the Battle of Karbala in 680. The battle was a victory for Sunni Arab forces against Shia forces, which led to the Shia becoming their own separate sect. In this vein, Iran is a majority Shia state, and as a result is connecting the Battle of Karbala to the Iran-Iraq War because in both cases the Shia were on the defensive from outside forces. This poster was presumably intended for the Iranian public to get involved and join the cause against Iraq. It is not known who made the poster, but the government sponsored it.